Aster City Cosmos NPCs

[Parrot]

Thread for my hockey team NPCs and a bit of info about the team itself!

Aster City Cosmos

Team colors: ◼ Black, ◼ White, ◼ Violet, ◼ Malibu

City: Aster City

Home arena: (To be named)

Owner: ?

General manager: Tony Inoue

Head coach: Willow Brightshire

Background (WIP):
- National Hockey League team based in Aster City
- The second NHL franchise to call Aster City its home (joining the older, more successful, cooler, better-liked Aster City Nine Tails), and the only expansion team to have been founded in the same city as another active NHL franchise
- Founded by (?) following the runaway success of a rebooted hockey-centric space opera TV show filmed in Aster City
- The franchise draws its name and almost all of its branding from the source TV show; this was above all a marketing move meant to draw new fans into both the NHL and the show itself, and to give the new team an invested (merchandise-happy!!!) fanbase to start with
- Statistically one of the worst teams in the entire history of the NHL, even by expansion team standards, though they've been trying very hard to remedy that and have assembled an incredibly potent defensive lineup (offense, on the other hand...)
- Though they may not be likely to win them, their games are still a ton of fun to go to - especially if you like a good old-fashioned hockey brawl, which they have a surprising affinity for as a bunch of guys with glittery unicorns on their chests

Partial roster:

Player	#	Position	Ht	Wt	Age	Birthplace
Mateo Alvarado	1	G	6'1"	205	45	San Antonio, TX, USA
Tobias Kirkland	20	C	5'11"	185	22	Brooklyn, NY, USA
Reese McCann	28	RW	5'9"	165	19	New London, CT, USA
Justice Burnett	32	RD	6'4"	230	26	Cuero, TX, USA
Mason Faulkner	38	LW	6'0"	175	25	Undisclosed, NC, USA
Dainis Zemzaris	51	G	6'0"	240	21	Zvejniekciems, LVA
Jonah Winters	95	LD	5'11"	180	23	Washington, D.C., USA

[Parrot]

Name: Willow Brightshire
Age: 41
Race: Unicorn
Home: Aster City
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Likes: Classical music, crunching numbers, sweets
Dislikes: Getting his fur dirty, being argued with
Job: Head Coach, Aster City Cosmos

Relationships:
- His family doesn’t really get what he does for a living or why he chose to do it, but they’re proud he’s making such a big name for himself and for Aster City.

- Still fond of the Nine Tails players and coaching staff from the time he spent with them, but even they’re not immune to his wrath if he feels there’s been a dirty play or a bad call.

- Relationship with the Cosmos players has been likened by color commentators to an exasperated teacher trying to keep a bunch of first graders under control on a field trip, if those first graders were six feet tall and ripped. While he wouldn’t go to quite that level of hyperbole, he readily admits they’re the most challenging team he’s ever coached, owing to the difficult circumstances of an expansion team and the guys’ assortment of… strong personalities. He cares about them and believes in them more than anyone, he’s just… so very tired.

Personality:
Don’t be fooled by his elegant appearance and dainty-sounding name – Willow is a strong-willed, no-nonsense man with a temper and vocabulary that’ve been shaped by twenty years around professional hockey players. He’s known for his sharp tongue as much as his tremendous coaching skill; he takes his game very, very seriously and is both quick and relentless in calling out unsportsmanlike or ‘disgraceful’ conduct when he sees it, regardless of which side it happened on. He won’t hesitate to challenge other officials on what he feels are bad calls, either, and has earned quite a reputation for squabbling with referees (and usually being in the right).

He’s known to be hard on his own players – he doesn’t believe sugarcoating things helps anyone improve and has little patience for fooling around and making excuses – but is also fiercely defensive of them and liable to lash out in response to others’ criticism of them. He may not be the most delicate or agreeable guy out there, but he really does care about his players, and his coaching methods are undeniably effective.

History:
From a family of renowned magical relic appraisers in Aster City. He broke his horn while roughhousing with his brother when they were young, which caused him to lose his magical abilities. Though he wasn’t shunned by his family, losing his magic made it difficult for him to relate to them and participate in their traditions, and he found himself feeling more at home with regular people and picking up more “human” interests. Sports was chief among them – ice hockey his favorite – and while it was hard for him to actually play, having a dangerously sharp horn and hooves instead of hands, he found the world of fantasy sports endlessly fascinating. He pored over statistics and sat in front of his family’s TV for hours, watching each player’s moves like a hawk and dreaming of someday putting together his own all-star squad.

Once he was old enough to leave home, knowing his lack of magical ability meant he could be little more than a bookkeeper for his family’s business, he decided instead to pursue his coaching dream. He got his start providing logistical support and recordkeeping for Aster City’s club hockey teams and made his way up the coaching ladder in short order, owing to remarkable decision-making skills and almost encyclopedic knowledge of the game. Though it took some players and fellow staff a while to get on board with the “wait this guy’s a horse” thing, especially as his work began to bring him outside Aster City, his affinity for leadership was undeniable. He led many teams to victory, from casual clubs to collegiate and minor league organizations, and eventually found a position in the National Hockey League as an assistant coach for the Aster City Nine Tails – the home team he’d adored watching since he was a boy.

Following his continued success with the Nine Tails in the national league, when word came years later that the league would be expanding and welcoming a completely new franchise in Aster City, Willow was the top choice for the team’s first head coach. It was a position he accepted with tremendous gratitude: coaching his own squad and representing his own hometown on a national stage was a dream right out of the fantasy sports days of his youth, only this was reality. He vowed to himself that he’d build the greatest team in the nation, one people everywhere would admire.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about professional hockey could tell you that the Aster City Cosmos are about as far from “the greatest team in the nation” as you could get, and anyone who knows a bit about the administrative side of things could tell you that the Cosmos’ yearslong crash-and-burn saga seems to have all but ruined the outstanding career and reputation Coach Brightshire spent two decades cultivating. He doesn’t see it like that, though. Greatness doesn’t come overnight, and it might not come in one, two, five years – however long it takes, he’s committed to keep working with his players until they achieve the things he knows they’re all capable of. The Cosmos might be a joke of a team, but they’re HIS joke of a team, and he’s with them to the very end.

Anything else:
- One of the youngest coaches in the NHL (even younger than veteran Cosmos player Rusty Alvarado). Definitely the only unicorn among them.

- Has clawlike hooves and sharp fangs, owing to some kirin ancestry. The teeth are pretty surprising to most people and add a lot of weight to his "stop that right now or so help me" glares.

- Will kick you if you make the “why the long face” joke

[Parrot]

Name: Jonah Winters
Age: 23
Race: Human
Home: Aster City
Origin: Washington, D.C.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Likes: Makeup, theater and musicals, reading fanfiction
Dislikes: Being alone, not having Internet
Job: Defenseman, Aster City Cosmos

Relationships:
- Has been with his girlfriend King since middle school, where they met in art class. She’s a cosmetologist whose work inspired Jonah’s interest in makeup and fashion; he’s always learning new tips from her to improve his own skills. They’re an adorable, boisterous couple and are never far from each other, but they haven’t gotten married yet because both of them are certain the other is going to propose.

- Fellow Cosmos player Mason Faulkner is his best friend. They’re an odd pair, with the gritty Faulkner usually playing the straight man to Jonah and his antics, but they love each other nonetheless. Their families are very close; Faulkner and his wife and daughters frequently stay at Jonah’s place during the regular season so they don’t have to be far away from each other.

- Protective of rookie Reese McCann in a brotherly sort of way, though their teammates are more inclined to call it coddling. He’s a very empathetic person and reacts strongly to Reese’s emotions, so he’s quick to shield him from any kind of criticism, deserved as it is.

- Adored by all of his Cosmos teammates; his optimism and energy are infectious, which goes a long way for a team so down on its luck. He’s a guy who you can always goof around with and who won’t hesitate to offer you a hand when you need it.

He routinely tries to get the guys to let him practice doing makeup on them. Responses vary.

Personality:
Jonah is the kind of guy you can’t help but love – the life of any party, a sharp-witted jokester, a kind and generous friend, and a gentle soul willing to lend an ear or a shoulder whenever it’s needed. He has a bright and exuberant personality and an aura of joy that spreads like wildfire; it’s hard to be glum with the world’s biggest hype man at your side. In many ways he’s the heart of the Cosmos franchise, beloved by fans and fellow players alike; he embodies the flashiness and showmanship that give the Cosmos its identity, and no matter what the team’s going through, he’s always there to make their game a little happier.

Though ‘hype’ is his default setting, he does know how to dial it back when it’s not appropriate and is as good at offering sympathy as he is a smile.

History:
Born and raised in Washington, D.C. He was encouraged to start playing hockey by his uncle, a local junior league coach, and became a promising defenseman over his school years. He played on Georgetown’s ice hockey team while pursuing a performing arts degree and was eventually drafted into the NHL by the newly formed Aster City Cosmos. He immediately fell in love with Aster City – to him, a place of endless beauty, life, and energy, totally opposite the solemn D.C. he’d grown up in – and moved there with his long-time girlfriend after his first year with the Cosmos. He’s since become a fan favorite, owing to his charming personality and style, and is perhaps one of the most iconic players of the young Cosmos franchise.

Hockey stuff:

Position: Left defense

Height/Weight: 5’11”/180

Sweater number: 95
- The same number he’s worn since high school. He asked his girlfriend to pick it for him and has worn it ever since.

Playing style:
- Not a very big or tough defenseman, but agile and clever. Tries to avoid body checking where possible, instead opting to use speed and smart positioning to get the puck away from attacking players. Polar opposite to his defensive partner Major Burnett, though their strategies are very effective (and entertaining) when used together – it’s a lot harder to fend off Jonah’s thieving attempts when you’ve just been hit by a human freight train.

Anything else:
- Loves anything involving people. If the Cosmos are holding any kind of public event, you can bet he’ll be there. He also enjoys making content for the team’s social media accounts in his spare time.

[Parrot]

Name: Mason Faulkner
Age: 25
Race: Human
Home: Rabun Gap, GA
Origin: Undisclosed, NC
Alignment: True Neutral
Likes: Baseball caps, fishing
Dislikes: Interviews, whiners
Job: Alternate captain/Left wing, Aster City Cosmos

Relationships:
- Has a wife, Katie, and two young daughters Fern and Skyler. His greatest mission in life is to be a good husband and father, one his family can be proud of, and though he loves his career he often wonders if it’s keeping him away from them too much.

- Fellow Cosmos player Jonah Winters is his best friend. They’re an odd pair, with the gritty Faulkner usually playing the straight man to Jonah and his antics, but they love each other nonetheless. Their families are very close; Faulkner and his wife and daughters frequently stay at Jonah’s place during the regular season so they don’t have to be far away from each other.

- Loses his patience pretty easily with his linemates Reese McCann and Tobias Kirkland; he sees them as soft rookies who feel entitled to stardom but aren’t willing to put in the work to get there. He’s good about not letting it affect how he works with them on the ice, but he’ll really let them have it when they’re back in the locker room.

- Respected among the Cosmos players and looked up to more for “serious” matters than even the actual captain, Major. He finds himself filling the captain role quite often, given how frequently Major ends up in the box, and has shaped into a firm and tactical leader.

Personality:
Faulkner is a blunt, serious, and hard-working man – a little hard to get along with, maybe, but very reliable. A workhorse with a one-track mind, once he sets his sights on something, he’ll work tirelessly to achieve it; giving up or taking it easy is never an option for him. He credits most of his success in life to that incredible resoluteness, and because of that, he has little sympathy for “crybabies” – people who complain when things aren’t just handed to them or call it quits when the going gets rough. Though he’s usually pretty levelheaded, whining is an easy way to get him to lose his temper.

He's also a very private person, averse to talking about himself or his life unless it’s absolutely necessary – even if it’s with close friends. He’s most cryptic about his childhood and the family he grew up in. It seems to be a source of bad memories for him, so his teammates don’t pry.

In contrast to how standoffish he is with most people, he’s very warm with his family, especially his two young children. He’s a gentle and doting father, and his daughters mean more than life itself to him. At Cosmos team practices, it’s charming and a bit funny to watch him alternate between baby talking to his children through the glass and giving his linemates an earful for being “incompetent dickheads.”

History:
The details of Faulkner’s youth are a well-guarded secret. What’s publicly known of his life and career begins with his time as a collegiate athlete at the University of Michigan. Though he wasn’t from a sporting background, he took a keen interest in ice hockey as a freshman and “worked his ass off,” he says, to become a serious player. He started out playing in a fraternity beer league of sorts and later moved up through UMich’s club team to its renowned varsity ice hockey team. He became well-known for both his precision shooting skill and his ambition, having created a promising athletic career virtually out of nothing. He signed with the Carolina Hurricanes out of college but struggled to break into the team’s permanent lineup, playing with them infrequently and for less than a year before being traded to the Aster City Cosmos. Now, after four years of playing with the team through its toughest times, he’s earned the title of alternate captain and a comfortable spot on the Cosmos’ first line.

Hockey stuff:

Position: Left wing

Height/Weight: 6’0”/175

Sweater number: 38
- The number of currently known falcon species. His surname means ‘keeper of falcons.’

Playing style:
- Intelligent and calculating, if prone to overthinking. He’s always looking for ways to set up scoring opportunities for his teammates and get plays moving. Though he’s a deadeye shooter himself, he tends to only make shots when he’s in a very advantageous position, usually opting to pass to guys he thinks are better shots or in better places. This hesitation to put pucks on the net is something he’s often criticized for, though he thinks it’s better than being greedy. He’s also one of the more physical Cosmos forwards and will throw his body around if he needs to (something the others on his line wouldn’t even think of doing).

Anything else:
- Very particular about his appearance, even down to tiny details like the length of his nails or the precise shape of his eyebrows. Curiously, despite all the work he puts into his looks, he seems to have an aversion to showing his face - even around his close friends and teammates. It’s unusual to see him without a baseball cap, which he’ll tip down to hide his eyes.

- Originally hated the Cosmos jerseys, finding them tacky and girly, but they’ve grown on him because his daughters adore them.

- Prefers to be called by his last name.

[Parrot]

Name: Tobias Kirkland
Nicknames: Toby
Age: 22
Race: Human
Home: Brooklyn, New York
Alignment: True Neutral
Likes: Expensive wines, house plants, nightlife
Dislikes: Helmet hair, stuffy people
Job: Center, Aster City Cosmos

Relationships:
- Distant from his family as his personality and lifestyle have developed dramatically away from theirs as he’s gotten older, but they still support him and he still appreciates it, as little as he tends to show it.

- Complicated relationship with rookie Reese McCann, his linemate, roommate, and (not that he would ever admit it) best friend. Though he initially hated Reese – a loser and a crybaby to boot – and found a sort of schadenfreude in watching him struggle, Toby warmed up to him after seeing how much Reese looked up to him. Now he doesn’t mind having the rookie under his wing; knowing the team’s supposed franchise player admires him gives him a sense of pride and self-worth he’s scarce felt since coming up to the big leagues and, honestly, he finds it pretty fun to show Reese all the things his “proper” upbringing had him missing out on. He still has some reservations about getting close to Reese, though; having spent most of his young adult life being strongly independent, he’s not sure how to feel about leaning on someone else like he can sense himself doing with Reese – or the unexpected fondness he’s started to feel for him…

- Frequently at odds with his Cosmos teammates, owing largely to his general unkindness and poor team spirit. Some question why he’s still in the NHL at all, much less on the Cosmos’ first line; Toby thinks they’ve got no room to talk, the team was already shit before he got here. The friction between Toby and his teammates makes it damn hard to work with him on the ice sometimes, let alone in the locker room.

He’s particularly edgy with goalie Danny Zemzaris given their mutual interest in Reese.

Personality:
A cool, confident, and vain individualist with a love for worldly pleasures. He’s social but at the same time somewhat aloof, enjoying attention but not wanted to be tied down to anything or anyone. He likes to spend his free time drinking and partying at upscale locales, where his good looks, quick wit, and flirtatious personality make him effortlessly popular, but prefers any connections he makes to last scarcely longer than the night itself. He’s not particularly close even with his friends and family; he seems to believe that the only way to live his life as freely as he wants to is to keep the rest of the world at arm’s length.

For those who do manage to get close to him, he’s… a bit of a handful. He’s stubborn and independent, doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and generally speaking without regard for what anyone thinks of it. He’s also got something of an attitude, and though he’s an adept sweet-talker when he wants to be, he’s usually pretty blunt – especially when you’ve annoyed him, which is really not that hard to do. He’s not without some charm, though; he’s very clever and insightful and, if you can get him talking about something he’s interested in (you know, like himself), an entertaining conversationalist and storyteller.

He carries a lot of bitterness from the way his pro playing career started, and it poisons how he views himself and others’ intentions. Of himself, he believes that he is unappreciated, unacknowledged, and deserving of better, and of others, he feels that that there is no one truly in his corner; his teammates, his fans, his family all judged him when he struggled, so surely anyone else will only do the same eventually. He brushes it off and maintains that the only opinion that matters to him now is his own, but the reality is it’s left him with a growing loneliness – and while his desire for independence may prevent him from recognizing or accepting it, he undeniably still feels it.

History:
A New Yorker born and raised. He grew up in a blue-collar family in Brooklyn and started playing hockey as a young boy because his father thought it would be a good way for him to keep active and build toughness. While he saw it as little more than a hobby for most of his youth, by the end of his high school years his skills had blossomed impressively and he’d been scouted for several college programs, giving him the inspiration and ego boost to pursue hockey at a higher level. He ultimately committed to a few years with Harvard’s collegiate team and, with the change of scenery and new perspective on his career, reinvented himself too – a smart but unassuming boy become a newly independent young athlete, he gained a newfound confidence and a love for the high life, training by day and partying with his teammates by night. He was drafted by the NHL’s Aster City Cosmos early in his college career, and though he felt a bit slighted by being a late-round selection, he didn’t let it get to him – maybe his potential wasn’t fully recognized now, but once he got his spot on the big league roster, everyone would see him for what he really could be.

After fulfilling his commitment to Harvard, Toby signed with the Cosmos and started out with their farm team to develop. This was perhaps his first reality check; at best the better side of “average,” he found himself most frequently on the third or fourth line and bouncing between the AHL and ECHL rather than getting a call up to the big club. Though it annoyed him to see his talents so undervalued, he reasoned that if no one else could see he was worth the NHL roster spot, he would just have to knuckle down and earn it.

His progress was slow and his play remained far from standout, but by the latter half of his second ELC year, he’d gotten himself a stable position on the second line – and the Cosmos were struggling through an injury-plagued season. Faced with a dearth of healthy forwards, the Cosmos extended him the NHL call-up he’d been waiting for – and though “everyone better than you is hurt, so we don’t have much of a choice here” wasn’t exactly the debut circumstances he’d hoped for, he was eager to finally have the chance to showcase his skills at the national level.

Unfortunately, his introduction to the NHL was not a glamorous one; he was, after all, a middling AHL player and a third-order call-up, and playing on a team a league above his own only made him look worse in comparison. He tried his hardest to establish himself, but he struggled to adapt to the speed and intensity of top-level hockey, and a Cosmos fanbase already strained by a seemingly cursed season received him – and his polarizing personality – harshly. Toby’s pride at making it pro turned quickly to resentment; he knew he was talented, he knew he deserved to be there, but no matter how hard he worked everyone seemed to reject him. And if that was how it was going to be, he decided, he wasn’t going to keep caring about “proving” his worth to people who would never acknowledge it. His teammates and fans and whoever else were welcome to talk about him all they wanted, but he couldn’t give a damn what they actually thought any more. He rode out the rest of the rocky season on and off the fourth line, his play inconsistent and his relationship with the team bitter, and cleaned out his locker expecting nothing but a move back to the A that summer.

It’s a wonder, then, that he’s not only back on the Cosmos roster for the next season but slotted into the first line, centering the team’s best winger and much-anticipated first-overall draft pick. Though it was an unpopular move with fans (not to mention the rest of the Cosmos), Coach Brightshire was insistent that within that line is the potential for league-leading offensive efficiency, and so, for the time being, it remains. Toby himself isn’t sure what to make of the unprecedented promotion. Above all, it feels like a joke – a cruel one, too, for making him even more of a lightning rod than he was before – but perhaps it’s better than returning to the farm to languish. And maybe, if he can set his ego aside long enough to really work with his new linemates, he’ll be able to show the league the talent he yearned to have acknowledged after all.

Hockey stuff:

Position: Center

Height/Weight: 5’11”/185

Sweater number: 20
- No particular meaning – he just thinks it’s a pleasing number.

Playing style:
- An unremarkable center in most respects, having only made it to the NHL for his club’s lack of better options. He’s not terrible, as much as fans like to say it, but his game lacks identity and flair and he struggles to make an impression in a league full of standout centers. He does have some notable talent in the form of exceptional puck tracking and reaction time, giving him the potential to be a powerful finisher, but he has to be paired with skilled wingers to fully utilize it.

Also has a penchant for chirping, which is about the only thing his teammates will agree he’s good at.

Anything else:
- Very popular with female hockey fans, which some suspect is part of the reason he’s even still touching NHL ice.

- He claims to not care about any teams other than his own (honestly maybe including his own), but he grew up an Islanders fan and still has an Isles bias if you look hard enough.

- Was an English major at Harvard and actually took it pretty seriously. Bizarrely opinionated on American poets.